Write about three people you have hurt.
You do not appear in their stories.
These are slices of life—quiet, mundane, real.
But at the very end of each narrative, include one fleeting moment where your name comes up.
Not as a centrepiece. Not with emotion. Just… an afterthought.
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1.
The day started out as any other regular day. Alarm went off at 7.15, breakfast, coffee – which was drank in the bathroom as I got ready to head out the door. A regular day, regular weather, regular everything. Work was a bit hectic, but nothing outside of the ordinary. I would call it an all-in-all a good day. The day would end better since I had been invited to a birthday party, and I looked really looked forward to a night of dancing and hanging out with my friends.
I got on the train, sipped my wine cooler and relaxed while I listened to music and just looked out the window. It wasn’t a long train ride, but it was nice to sit back for a few minutes and just looked at the world. I passed along roads, Forrest’s, rivers, the beach and the sea. It was nothing out of the ordinary with anything. It was all out there unchanged and – what appeared to me – unchanging. I felt a little raise in my pulse as the train rushed past a part of the sea and something got perked way back in my memories. I remembered that place. Audun had taken me there a couple of times. It was a nice spot, but I hadn’t been back for years. “Huh, I had forgotten all about that place,” I thought to myself as I looked back for a moment.
Well, it wasn’t anything to linger or use any more energy on. Went back to just staring out of the window, looking at the world rushing by the window and sipping to my wine getting more and more excited about the party.
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2.
The weather was lovely and the city was buzzing with life. It was locals, kids running about smearing ice cream all over their clothes, tourists, pigeons, crows and people selling stuff from small pop-up shops all around. A classic summer day. We walked around and liked in the windows, looked at the pop-up shops, laughed at each other’s stories and enjoyed the day.
I had wanted to go out and eat someplace and you happily joined me. It was good to see each other again. We tried to figure out if it was more or less than a month since last time we had both been able to get time off from our life’s and hang out.
As the day passed we started to look for a place to eat. We discussed in length and we both came up with various options and restaurants, but neither of us could really figure out where we actually wanted to eat. We passed a few places, looked at the menus they kept out front, looked to see if they had many customers and such. No place seemed really right. We passed this little Greek place and you suggested we go in. You had heard they had good food and great service and I was about to say I could try it out as I wasn’t sure if I had tried that place before. “No! I have been here. Years ago. A…. guy I knew once took me. They have great bread and decent portions for the price! Sure, let’s go in here,” I said.
I remembered correctly. The bread was great, and the food and service were excellent. The prices had gone up a bit, but that’s the day and age we live in, I suppose. We had some wine and we continued our conversation and laughed and enjoyed ourselves well into the evening.
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3.
The thing people don’t talk about very much when moving from a house and into an apartment, is how much stuff they find that they have to give away/sell/throw away/force upon friends, families and neighbours. Fair enough, I hadn’t lived here for very long, so I didn’t have that much extra stuff to get rid of. But there were much more than I anticipated. I had already brought over most of the furniture and the most important things, but it seemed like I had more than half a house left to stuff into the new apartment. I was in the attic going through boxes of old things; photos, things bought and barely used after opening, empty jars just waiting for the day I would start making the jam I had dreamt of making, bottles too cool to be thrown away and other memorabilia from a life lived. I found a box of old high school stuff. Writings, diploma, report cards (my grades wasn’t as bad as I had remembered them!) and some old journals.
I skimmed through them and laughed and thought back with the kind of embarrassment that only a teenager’s life, thoughts and hopes can bring out.
“Oh god! I wrote that?” was an outburst that came more than once during my reading. Audun’s name came up a few times. “He called me last night drunk and attention seeking wanting to be my boyfriend,” I had written. Yeah… I should have hung up and not bothered with him. “Well, well. No need to keep all of this stuff I suppose,” I said out loud to get me out of my trip down memory lane. I kept my exam papers, diploma and the report cards. The rest got sent to be turned into new paper. Paper that perhaps future teenagers will write down their embarrassing thoughts and feelings on and look back at in 20 years and cringe about.
